


a jewel in the scarlet crown

by Laylah



Category: Homestuck
Genre: AU Empire, Breeding Trolls, Community: bucketlist, Conditioning, Inverted Hemospectrum, M/M, Meaningless Consent, Sex Slavery, Virginity Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-03
Updated: 2013-03-03
Packaged: 2017-12-04 03:56:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/706263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laylah/pseuds/Laylah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You'd thought your master's hive was grand, but it's nothing compared to the Imperial Palace. The building rears up before you, sweeping arches and high towers, black stone ornamented with garnet-colored tile. The banners snapping in the wind are brighter, though, a red so bright it looks unnatural: the banners of the Scarlet Emperor, newly risen, the first of his blood since the Signless Sunderer tore down the old empire and built the new one a thousand sweeps ago. Every noble in the Empire is coming to the Capital tonight, bringing gifts to demonstrate their allegiance and beg the new Emperor's favor.</p>
<p>Your master is bringing you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a jewel in the scarlet crown

**Author's Note:**

  * For [roachpatrol](https://archiveofourown.org/users/roachpatrol/gifts).



> Started for one of the kink meme prompts about Eridan/the Ampora line being able to bear young -- this one specified a reversed hemospectrum and wanted either Karkat/Eridan or Signless/Dualscar as its main pairing.
> 
> Finished for Roach, who kept making pining faces so I didn't forget about it even after months.
> 
> I apologize to grubfic fans, but there is no actual offspring-spawning here, whoops.

You'd thought your master's hive was grand, but it's nothing compared to the Imperial Palace. The building rears up before you, sweeping arches and high towers, black stone ornamented with garnet-colored tile. The banners snapping in the wind are brighter, though, a red so bright it looks unnatural: the banners of the Scarlet Emperor, newly risen, the first of his blood since the Signless Sunderer tore down the old empire and built the new one a thousand sweeps ago. Every noble in the Empire is coming to the Capital tonight, bringing gifts to demonstrate their allegiance and beg the new Emperor's favor.

Your master is bringing you.

The carriage creaks and sways, moving more slowly as it approaches the palace. You duck back from the curtains, even though you'd like to see more; you were too small to remember much of anything when you were brought to your master's hive in the first place, and in the six sweeps since then you've been kept close at hand. You've certainly never seen anything so impressive as the Capital and its palace in real life before. But you've thrown off your cloak and veil in the hot, close quarters of the carriage, and you've been given strict orders not to show so much as a fin where commoners could see you. Part of your value is the fact that you're new: untouched, pristine, just at the cusp of your very first spawning season. Your mouth has been thoroughly trained for recreational use, of course, but your nook has never been filled, and your master wants to make a point of that—he's giving you up without using you to spawn his own heir. Breeders like you are rare (though not as rare as a holy scarletblood, of course), and whoever he acquires to replace you will be an older troll who has already serviced other masters.

So you've been hidden in a closed carriage to play up all that new-and-untouched business, covered from horns to toes in layers of silk and embroidery, all of it blazing saffron orange as an advertisement of where you came from.

You think it looks like shit with the purple of your eyes and your breeder's forelock, but symbolism doesn't care about that.

When the carriage rolls to a halt for the last time and the driver gets down to fuss over the hoofbeasts, you're in the middle of daydreaming about how you'd look in scarlet. None of this stiff embroidered bullshit, either—some kind of clingy wispy silks that make it clear how pretty you are. (You know you're pretty; all your trainers said so. One of them used to tell you, all hushed and needy, how bad he wanted to fill you. Well, he said "pail," but nobody actually _pails_ with a breeder, right? It's the whole reason nobles keep you around. No pail necessary, direct genetic lines guaranteed. Anyway, that was damn flattering right up to the point where the guy saying it got suddenly disappeared and you had to deal with a lot of questions and physical exams to find out whether he'd done more than just talk.)

Your mind is wandering; you get snapped out of it when the driver bangs on the carriage door and calls, "Hey, fishpail, you decent?" You won't miss that bulgelicking sack of cerulean grubshit at _all_.

"Just a sec," you answer, fussing your cloak back on and fixing your stupid veil. There was really no good solution for hiding your magnificently developing horns; the cloak has a hood with a lot of extra room in it and it looks fucking silly but it gets the job done, you suppose. Not like you need to impress anyone who's only going to see you in this stupid orange tent of a costume, and maybe it'll make the Emperor more pleased to unwrap you and discover what he's actually gotten. "Okay," you say when you're as fixed up as you're going to get.

He unlocks the carriage and offers you a grudging hand getting down; your feet peek out from under the bottom of your costume, but too bad. If they didn't want even a glimpse of your skin to show anywhere, they should have given you slippers.

"The Marquis Boneplain's gift?" asks a servant in scarlet livery. She has neat, smartly curled horns and a face that says she takes no crap from anyone.

Your driver nods. "An unbonded, untouched breeding slave," he says. He hands over a thick, creamy envelope. "His lineage records, and the notes on his conditioning."

The servant makes some notes in a ledger, and then on a loose sheet of paper that she gives to your driver. She looks you up and down. "This way," she says. You follow her into the palace, and you're not going as fast as she'd clearly like, but once she gets a look at _why_ you're slowed up—the thin ceremonial hobble-chain that only lets you take half a step at a time—it seems to turn from annoyed _at_ you to annoyed _with_ you. She sighs in exasperation, but she slows down so you can keep up. The floors are black marble, cool under your feet.

"So, you takin me to see His Imperial Devvastation?" you ask.

"Directly?" she asks. "Goodness, no. He's in the middle of a reception right now, with all of the most important dignitaries of his Empire. His adjutant will review the tribute and determine what needs his personal attention."

You fidget with the edges of your sleeve. "About how long wwill that take?"

Her lips purse; she's not impressed with you at all. "I suggest you cultivate patience."

* * *

It is a fucking _understatement_ to say that you're pleased when the reception finally starts winding down. You've been doing your grudgefucking best to do the political thing, to make nice, to fence with words instead of drawing your sickles, even though every one of these shitstains is a huntbeast in prey's clothing. (No, you can't even make yourself follow through with that metaphor; prey can never afford to dress up like this and call all this fucking attention to themselves.)

But they circle, like the pack has scented your precious blood and now they're all desperate for a taste. You bare your teeth and avoid making any promises and dance with an endless stream of fawning jackals, and drink more grub wine than is probably smart but much less than you want to. You don't look for Sollux with all the willpower you can muster. He's a shade too yellow to be welcome at this party, which is maddening and stupid but also makes him invaluable as your right hand. While you go through the motions out here and hate your entire court platonically, he's elsewhere in the palace, sorting out all the hoofbeastshit that goes on behind the scenes.

It feels like it must be nearly dawn by the time you feel the uncomfortable prickle of psionics up the back of your neck. You do your best not to sag with relief. The tribute has been tallied, everything inspected, and—you glance over at the hallway where he's waiting now; he confirms your hopes with a little shake of his head—nobody has made an overt attempt to kill you. The party can end without any ritual combat. (Not that you have anything against ritual combat, obviously, or you wouldn't have succeeded the throne, but you are (a) exhausted and (b) drunk and (c) wearing a fuckmiserable impractical formal costume.)

You finish this particular dance and step back, trying for a smile that doesn't look too much like an invitation to strife. The garnetblood you'd been dancing with bows gracefully and murmurs her congratulations. You mouth some stupid platitudes about how much you've enjoyed her company. The musicians have stopped playing; you disengage from your partner and make your way up to the dais at the front of the room. There's a stupid speech about how you're going to do your Ancestor proud and lead the Empire into a new age of prosperity. Sollux wrote most of it, and you've practiced it so many times that you can, in fact, recite the whole thing while exhausted and drunk et cetera.

After the speech there's the awful, torturously slow process of getting everyone to fucking _leave_ , and you really can see gray at the horizon by the time the last of them has gone. You're shredding your stupid costume on the way back to your private suite. "Tell me that was the worst of it," you growl.

"Ehehehe," Sollux laughs, that obnoxious sound that always makes you want to smack him in the most affectionate way. "The wortht of it for tonight, at leatht."

You groan. "Why did I even challenge for this in the fucking first place," you say to the empty hallway in front of you.

It's a rhetorical fucking question but Sollux answers you anyway. "Becauthe you thort of had to," he says. "Onthe people knew about your blood, there would be fanaticth trying to get you the throne whether you challenged or not."

"I _know_ ," you grit out as you wrench open the outer door to your private suite. Stupid superstitious fuckpails insisting that the Sunderer reborn would be the best thing ever to happen to the New Empire. "Lock the fucking door behind you."

"Alwayth, KK," Sollux says. He's doing the rational voice. You're too tired for this shit.

When you hear the deadbolt slide home, you dump the majority of your costume on the overstuffed lounging bench and then flop on it in exhausted aggravation. There's just enough room for Sollux to curl up beside you. You shift and fuss around as if there's any way to make this feel less awkward, and he doesn't bitch when you catch him in the ribs, just snakes an arm around you and rests a warm hand on your abdomen. "Okay, you're being way too patient," you say. "Give me the bad news."

"It'th not ecthactly _bad_ ," he says. "A little thudden, maybe."

"Spit it out," you insist, punctuating the demand by twisting around so you can bite his bony shoulder. He still has his formalwear on and you get a mouthful of nasty fabric for your trouble.

He gets a hand buried in your hair and starts scratching slowly, gently, and he's not fighting fair at _all_ ; that's pretty much always been guaranteed to make you melt into a squashy compliant little grub. "Okay," he says. "A couple of people gave you breederth."

You wince a little. Of course you'll need an heir, yeah, and of course you'd be expected to try to breed true, but.... "Ugh," you say. "Tasteless to suggest I get to work on that right away, isn't it?" You sigh. "I guess it's no harm to keep them around until I'm ready. We won't have to go looking for somebody willing to sell one, at least."

"Yeah, that'th a good way to look at it," Sollux says. "Of courthe you're going to need to bond them both ath thoon ath pothible."

"I what?" you ask. You try to sound as suspicious as that statement deserves, but Sollux the cheating cheater is rubbing the base of one of your horns. "Bond them?"

Sollux nods. "You have to activate their conditioning to make them acthept you ath an owner. It'll be thlightly different for each one, thinthe one of them ith new and the other ith coming from a previouth owner, but bathically, eheh, you have to fuck thome thenthe into them before they go into thpawning theathon."

Your bile sac curdles. "I have to?" you repeat, even though you're pretty sure Sollux wouldn't phrase it like that if it were just a suggestion. "What happens if I don't?"

"Then either we cull them or they remain a liability," he says. He keeps petting you, almost painfully gentle. "They've been primed by their trainerth to take a new imprint. Think of it like their pathwordth have been rethet: whoever fulfillth their imprint conditionth getth their loyalty. If that imprint ithn't you, then they could be uthed againtht you or againtht each other."

You bury your face in his shoulder so he won't see your expression. You have a completely revolting case of the _feelings_ right now, which disgusting state of affairs you plan to blame on the liquor and the strain of being polite to bulgelickers all night. You...you knew that this whole Scarlet Emperor business was going to fuck up your personal life, yes. It's already meant you had to cut off contact with someone you really liked and thought was a good flushed possibility, because horror of horrors she was _teal_. But you were still hoping to have at least some chance at a normal concupiscent relationship or two before you moved on to the refined depravity of the upper nobility.

Oh no, the poor Emperor, too much of a stupid romantic to appreciate how fucking lucky he is.

You mumble a request for clarification into Sollux's shoulder. "Thorry, come again?" he says.

"I said, I don't have to do it tonight—er, today, I guess—do I?"

"No, they're rethtrained for now, and nobody knowth about them yet tho we don't have to worry about thomeone trying to break in to thubvert them." He sounds so completely calm about the possibility. You don't have the right to complain about anything when you have someone like him keeping your shit together. "It can wait until you've had thome thleep."

"Okay." You pry yourself up off the bench and offer a hand to haul Sollux up too. "I guess I'll...go do that, then. And try to be less of a horrible shitbag about this in the evening."

"Thoundth good to me," Sollux says. You kiss each other on both cheeks and he turns for the door. "Thee you then."

* * *

You are non-fucking-plussed about this whole situation, you have to say. Sitting around for hours waiting, getting sneered over by that skinny goldblood douche, having your costume taken away without even a chance for it to make a fucking impression, and then getting marched into the stupid harem quarters to get chained to the wall and wait some more. The stupid harem quarters where another breeder is waiting, because your old master wasn't the only one to come up with the clever idea of giving the Emperor heir-making material.

When you first got in here you ignored the shit out of the other one—not too hard, when you were chained up by your collars to opposite walls with a nice big pool sunk in the floor between you. You didn't even look straight at him, dropping yourself right down into the little recuperacoon your chain would let you reach. It was nearly dawn. You could excuse your behavior. It wasn't just that you were pissed about not being the only one.

When you first get up, too, there's food to worry about, a tray of cool thick slices of fish arranged all artful and decorated with shreds of toasted seaweed. You pick at the food, pretending you're utterly fascinated with your breakfast. There's tuna on this plate that's highblood garnet, and that shit's delicious.

You run out of excuses to be preoccupied once your plate's clean, though. Much as you don't want to be, you're curious about him. You let yourself take a glance, at least. A couple of glances.

The one thing you for sure have over him is that you're young and fresh, and he's absolutely not. Seadweller growth slows to a crawl after ten or twelve sweeps, but it never quite stops entirely, and this guy's fucking big. He's got to be dozens of sweeps older than you. Carries it well, though; he's still in his prime, all sleek muscles and shit. Nice proportions, the same kind of balance you've got. You glance upward and the resemblance is kind of uncanny: his jaw, his fins, his _horns_ a match for yours, just taken to their logical conclusions. He's got two ragged scars running across one cheek, rich purple, and they ought to make him look like damaged goods but instead they just make him look like too much troll to be a tame breeding slave.

He's taking you in at the same time you're staring at him, and when you finally meet his eyes—like yours, if someone had just made the color that much richer—he smiles, and licks his lips all showy so you can see the jewelry in his tongue. You feel suddenly inadequate and jealous. You don't have any tongue studs, didn't think you'd ever be so sorry that your old master only had a minimum of holes put in you. "Howw old are you, darlin?" the stranger asks. His voice is deeper than yours, to go with the broader chest.

"Wwhat do you care?" you ask, and damn if your fins aren't trying to flare up like you could show off for him. "Loads younger than you, ain't that obvvious?"

"No harm in a little friendly convversation, is there?" he asks. He lounges like a fucking prince. You want to kill him or be him or _something_ , you don't even know. "Wwe're like to havve a few swweeps together, fortune wwilling."

"Seems like a wweird place to start, is all," you say weakly.

He shrugs. God, you want to bite the bone that crests at his shoulder. "I got reasons. I'll share."

You're being stubborn for no good reason, and you think your trainers would be ashamed of you. "Not quite nine," you say.

His face _lights up_. "I kneww it," he says. Even filed, his teeth are magnificent, his smile fantastic. "Oh, darlin, this is amazin serendipity here."

"Wwhat is?" you ask.

"Not quite nine swweeps ago," he says, still smiling at you like—you don't even know what to call it, fuck—"I threww a clutch for a garnet that didn't givve her an heir but _did_ givve her a breeder grub to sell off. Nevver thought I'd get to see the wwiggler myself."

You stare at him. "You're my...you...." You sure as hell never thought you'd know where you came from; that shit's for nobility. "Wwhat wwas she like?" you ask.

He laughs, shaking his head. "I don't remember much," he says. "They ain't bred to last, and after you livve long enough they start to blur together." He slips into the pool and wades toward you, coming as close as his collar and chain will let him. "Wwhat's your name, darlin?"

You should have asked him that first, you realize. "Eridan," you say. You slide into the water yourself, feeling how it just buoys you up, the perfect amount of salt. It laps at your gills as you wade toward him. "Wwhat about you?"

He gestures at the noble warrior's mess of his face. "Dualscar," he says.

"No wway that's your hatch name," you say.

"I ain't been called by my hatch name in probably two hundred swweeps," Dualscar says. "Picked up this name the first time I got sold after the fight wwhere I wwon the scars, an it stuck evver since."

He's _wonderful_. You reach out, and he reaches out, and you can't get your hands to touch but you want to, oh. You rattle the chain leading back from your collar to your side of the wall. "They ain't gonna keep us like this all the time, right?"

"Prob'ly not," Dualscar says. "Not a lot a them go for that kind a sevvere measure stuff if you behavve decent. Howw many owwners you had so far, lovvely? Just two?"

You nod. "An I only remember the one," you say. "I wwas just a wwiggler wwhen your garnet sold me."

"Havve to take you under my wwing," he says, "teach you all kinds a tricks," and you make kind of a token effort at being annoyed with him—he ain't your trainer, after all—but you want to preen at how he's looking at you, so the annoyed doesn't stick so well. If only the stupid chain would let you take one more step in his direction.

There's voices from outside the room, and you both stop, looking toward the door. Somebody out there sounds bitchy as hell. You sink down into the water a little, more instinct than anything.

"—so blistersucking _reasonable_ , Captor," the bitchy voice says as the door opens, and then cuts off with a huff.

A thin, nasal voice laughs then; the goldblood douche from last night, you think, and you hope his bitchy friend punches him for that laugh. "It'th what you keep me around for," he says, and then they're stepping out from behind the screens together. You were right about the goldblood, and just looking at his stupid sneering face makes you want to hit him. So you look away from him, because that's a dangerous thought, and look at the other guy instead.

The other guy is a short, stocky troll with crappy nub horns, wearing the heavy blacks of a military dress uniform. The trim on the uniform, and the irises of his eyes, are a red so bright it's unreal. "Fuck me sideways with a horrorterror," the Scarlet Emperor says, "they _match_."

"Shit, they do," the goldblood says happily. "I didn't even notithe latht night! They came in theparately and I didn't really get to compare."

The Emperor rubs his temples like he's getting a headache from the sound of that shithead's voice. You don't blame him; that lisp is the most obnoxious thing you've ever heard. "Captor, do not get your weirdo duality perving all over this. That is a fucking imperial decree, okay?"

"Take it eathy, KK," says Captor the douche. "I'm not here to make thith worthe."

"I know," the Emperor says, tired and irritable. He's the fucking emperor, what does he have to be so cranky about?

Captor beckons to Dualscar. "Come on out of there," he says. The two landdwellers go over to meet him as Dualscar climbs out of the pool, water sluicing down his skin, rivulets tracing paths along the sleek muscles of his back. He's comfortably taller than Captor, and a hell of a lot taller than the Emperor.

The Emperor squares his shoulders and glares up at Dualscar like he's a mountain that needs scaling. Dualscar smiles. "Honored to meet you, Your Devvastation," he says. He leans a little closer, almost a bit of a loom there. "I look forward to servvin you howwevver I may."

You blink and miss half the action, a blur of black and scarlet that ends with Dualscar kissing the floor and the Emperor's boot on his neck. "First lesson," the Emperor says. "I don't intimidate easily. I'm used to being the littlest guy in the room and I'm used to having to knock heads because of it." All that unfocused fussing is gone and suddenly he's a terror. "However, _used to it_ does not mean _into it_. If you push me on this I will replace you. Are we clear?"

You kind of want to throw yourself in the middle of that somehow, which doesn't make sense. You've been perfectly well trained. You know better than to protest what your master wants. Your stupid body still tries to take a step toward them, and you get queasy from even that much disobedience. You sink back into the water and breathe through your gills to calm down. Where did these fucking feelings even come from?

"Thank you for correctin me," Dualscar says, his voice almost even. "I beg you for a chance to earn forgivveness." You're impressed—that's a really great answer—but the Emperor grimaces as he takes his boot off Dualscar's neck and steps back.

"KK," Captor says.

"Shut up, I know," the Emperor snaps. He looks at Dualscar, still bowed down on the floor, holding the position he was put in. "Right. Up on your knees."

Dualscar sits up smoothly. You recognize the move—your trainer made you practice doing that for what felt like hours, doing a clean recovery to kneeling after you'd been put on the floor. You never got the point of it until now. Dualscar makes it look elegant, the curl of his spine and the roll of his shoulders, the way his hands settle loose and palm-up on his thighs. He looks fucking _exquisite_ , something any troll ought to be proud to call their own. (There's a way you get to call him _your_ own, isn't there? That's goddamn glorious.)

Shit, you're going to have a lot to measure up to.

The Emperor unbuttons his pants, still making this grim face like he's marching to war. It's kind of sexy, you suppose, in a really severe and martial way. Not much like what you're used to, but you'll learn. And Dualscar is watching the unveiling with this completely rapt expression, like he's starved for the Emperor's bulge. All this stuff you've been taught in the abstract is suddenly way more intense when you're watching it done for real.

"Come here," the Emperor says, harsh but kind of quiet, and despite the face he's making his hand's actually kind of gentle when he pulls Dualscar's head down. Maybe his face just stuck that way. Maybe you shouldn't think things like that about the Scarlet Emperor, or you'll get yourself in trouble.

Dualscar opens his mouth and takes the Emperor's bulge on his tongue (other things you shouldn't think about: the fact that you've definitely seen bigger), and the Emperor's eyes squeeze shut like he's a wiggler getting his first piercings done. You can't figure him out at all. Nothing he does makes any sense.

You pay attention to Dualscar instead, because he makes you feel proud instead of confused. His form's amazing, smooth strokes as he takes it down his throat, his hips rolling just enough to say he thinks this is hot without turning that into a demand. He doesn't let his hands tense or anything, just makes himself totally receptive. Your own bulge is squirming a little as you watch, but you know better than to touch it. You sort of hope Captor is frustrated too, since he had to go and invite himself along.

Somehow you sort of expect it to take longer, even though the Emperor is gasping and hissing almost from the start. Even in your earliest training sessions, you were expected to be able to provide pleasure longer than this. But it's only a couple of minutes before he's tightening his grip, clinging to one of Dualscar's horns and trembling, spasming as he goes off.

Dualscar's shoulders slump, all the tension going right out of his spine. The Emperor pulls out and you can see scarlet trickle from your progenitor's lips, his face slack and easy. "Oh my _god_ ," the Emperor says, staring at him. "Sollux, I can't—he's—"

"It'th jutht the conditioning," Captor says calmly. "Deep tranthe to make him retheptive, we thaw that in hith paperth, remember? You're halfway done. He'll thnap out of it when you get through thith."

You're freaked out mostly by the fact that _he's_ freaked out, until he lets go and steps back and Dualscar spills down onto the floor like a dropped marionette. His eyes are glazed and distant and he's not making any effort to swallow the genetic material that stains his lips. Your fins flare out hard enough to tremble. Just conditioning, Captor said. You hope the Emperor fucking hurries up.

Captor puts a hand on the Emperor's shoulder. "Finish the imprint, KK," he says quietly. "For everyone'th thafety."

"Right," the Emperor says. "Stop being such a cringing wiggler, Vantas." He comes around to kneel on the floor behind Dualscar, taking Dualscar's hips in both hands to raise them.

"Here," Captor says, and then red and blue light wraps around Dualscar's body, lifting him up, pushing his thighs further apart. He doesn't react, but you're pretty sure you can hate Captor enough for both of you.

The Emperor shifts closer, pauses just for a second, then slides his bulge up Dualscar's nook. You've never actually watched this happen before; you know the basics, clearly, but you weren't exactly given a lot of chances to see the theory put into practice. It's sort of graceless, it turns out. Maybe that's just because of the circumstances—the Emperor's an awkward little fuck, and Dualscar's not conscious enough to make up for him. Maybe it'll be more exciting when it's not about imprinting them on their master anymore.

Captor's psionic light lifts Dualscar's hips a little further and the Emperor reaches under him. That looks _really_ awkward, with the difference in their sizes, but he does it anyway, stroking steady and methodical. There's nothing elegant about the Emperor. He's not what you expected at all.

He's determined, though, and he keeps going, stroking Dualscar's bulge for what feels like a horrible suspended eternity before there's finally a reaction, a couple of little warning twitches and then a full-body shudder as Dualscar's face comes to life again. The tremors of orgasm are seriously fucking intense—you can believe now that it ups the sensation to have your nook stuffed when you come—and he claws at the tile floor as the Emperor suddenly finds the energy to nail him harder.

"Make some noise," the Emperor demands, and on the next breath, "Sollux, let him move."

The red and blue light retreats; Dualscar braces himself against the floor and rocks back, his spine rolling in a sinuous, fluid motion. "Yes," he says, a low, growling moan, "yes, please, Master, fuck me, fill me, yes," and that's enough to make it hot as hell again, to get your bulge pulsing and squirming as you watch. And the Emperor finally looks like he's gotten with the program, his fingers digging into Dualscar's hips and his teeth bared as he pushes back with some actual fucking enthusiasm.

You glance over at Captor and his expression—what you can see of it, with those stupid colored glasses over his eyes—hasn't changed, but his cheeks are turning an ugly shade of yellow. Good. He should be impressed, cause Dualscar is damned awesome. You'd be petting your own bulge if you dared, but you have no idea whether you're allowed to right now and you _know_ it's not acceptable to whine to your master about your needs while he's worrying about his.

Dualscar is crooning and purring as he pushes back into the Emperor's thrusts, sweet coaxing growls that have the Emperor panting for breath and snarling back. You chew on your lip, watching, tense all through _your_ limbs and in the pit of your gut as you think what Dualscar is saying: yes, please, yes, do it, come on, come on.

When the Emperor comes, his growl sounds like half triumph and half injury, and he bows almost double over Dualscar's back. The beat of your blood throbs in your bulge and if your teeth weren't filed you'd have shredded your mouth to ribbons by now. The water ought to be boiling from how hot you feel.

The Emperor pulls out, wobbly on his feet as he gets up. "There," he says. "Who do you belong to?"

"You, Master," Dualscar says. He sounds...peaceful.

"And whose orders do you follow?"

"Yours, wwith all my blood an bone," Dualscar answers. They're ritual words—you've had them taught to you, too—but you weren't expecting him to sound so much like he meant it.

The Emperor looks over at Captor, who nods. "Okay," the Emperor says. "I guess I'm done here for tonight, then."

"What?" Captor says. "But the other one—"

"Captor, please tell me I have other responsibilities besides fucking my slaves," the Emperor says. "Then tell me that some of those responsibilities are on my schedule for tonight."

"Yeth and yeth," Captor says. The Emperor looks relieved.

"Wwhat's wrong wwith me?" you blurt out, and you cringe immediately because that ought to earn you a lashing.

The Emperor doesn't order you beat, though. He blinks at you like he doesn't know what to do with the question. "Nothing's wrong with you," he says, and you meet his freaky scarlet eyes and think you might actually believe him. "I don't want to do this twice in one night, that's all. I'll be back for you tomorrow." You know that's the kind of thing that you can't ever take as a promise, no matter how it sounds; if you're not in season, other things are a higher priority than you. You still want to believe him.

He looks from you back to Dualscar, starting to dig for something in his pocket. "So you're safe to let go now, huh?" he says. "You'll do what you're fucking told?"

"Just givve me the wword," Dualscar says. That's not ritual. It sounds natural. Captor looks cranky but doesn't say anything.

"Here," the Emperor says, handing Dualscar a key. "You should be fine off the leash, then. Don't fuck your little doppelganger and don't fuck him up."

"Be more thpethific," Captor says.

The Emperor rolls his eyes. "Don't hurt him. Don't try to get him to hurt himself. Don't touch his nook or his bulge. Don't get him off."

Dualscar nods, slowly, almost a bow. "Can I unchain him too?"

"Yeah," the Emperor says, after a little pause where he's either surprised or thinking about it. "Sure, go ahead. Keep each other out of trouble or something, I don't know."

Captor takes a deep breath and then lets it out without saying anything. You hope he has a headache.

"Thank you, Your Devvastation," Dualscar says.

The Emperor nods, looking a little uncomfortable, though you can't tell if that's because he thinks this is awkward or just because he still has sticky genetic material and lubricating fluid smeared all over his bulge and his thighs. He lets Captor herd him out of the room, presumably to clean up and then go do whatever important shit is on his schedule that isn't you.

Dualscar unlocks the chain from his collar, slips back into the pool, and wades over to you. Thin little threads of scarlet trail behind him in the water. "He ain't gonna be so bad," he says.

You try to smile. "I guess you'vve got the experience to know," you say. You bow your head so he can reach the lock on the back of your collar, and then you feel the chain slide free and away. "The wway you...wwent under like that," you say, doing your best to sound casual and probably failing all over the fucking place. "That happen evvery time?"

He laughs, and he doesn't step away, slinging an arm over your shoulders. "Not wwith a kid like that," he says. "You gotta be primed for it or else they gotta givve you signals on purpose. I'vve had two, maybe three owwners wwho wwanted to trip that state evvery time, but it ain't a kink most a them go for."

"Good," you say, trying to convince your fins to flatten back down and relax. "Didn't look like a lot a fun, that part."

"Eh." He shrugs. "If you're that far under, nothin feels like a big deal." He steers you over to the side of the pool, where there are some steps cut in. They turn out to make a pretty good bench to sprawl on, and Dualscar keeps you snug right up against his side. You're not totally sure what to do with yourself—you heard as well as he did, your master told him not to screw you, and there ain't a lot of other reasons to want to be this close together, are there? Not for someone like you.

But he just relaxes in the water with you, lounging there while you curl against his side. He runs his fingers through your hair, drags his claws really light along your scalp and the back of your neck. "Pretty nice," you say after a while, as you realize that all your little tense twitchy bits are easing off, melting away into the water.

Dualscar hums, and you feel the noise where your skin meets his, a vibration that's low and sort of almost familiar. "Yeah, this should be a pretty good run," he says.

You shift against him and splay one hand across his chest, so you can feel his voice a little better. "I bet you must a had all kinds a advventures," you say. Look at you, getting to find out where you come from. "Tell me about some a them?"

"Oh, darlin," he says, and he presses a kiss to your forelock. "I'd lovve to."

* * *

You push your lunch around your plate as if that'll fool anyone. Most of the evening you were distracted enough with stupid complex imperial business, but you have next to nothing on your schedule for the after-midnight hours. Just one engagement, really.

"You thtill need to eat even when you don't feel good," Sollux says from across the table. You can see him struggling to keep a straight face: you've told him pretty much exactly that, in so many words, dozens of times over the sweeps. "Not eating maketh it worthe."

"And you ought to know, huh?" you say.

He doesn't even rise to the bait, just says, "I do have eckthperienthe with it, yeah." You must really be fucking up if he's _staying_ this rational.

You make yourself finish your lunch. It seems like a waste, ignoring your food when you have a fucking _nutrition block staff_ whose only job is to prepare your meals. They're supposed to be extremely good at it.

Somewhere in there, as you're shoveling food into your face, your revolting narcissistic self-pity flips quadrants into revolting narcissistic self-loathing: look at you, whining and dragging your feet like a scolded wiggler because you are expected to _have sex_ with a good-looking young troll who, from the look on his face last night, is going to be heartbroken if you don't. Oh, the agony. Oh, the hardship. So maybe it's not a beautiful destined quadrant match. A _lot_ of trolls don't get what they want in life, and usually in much uglier and more violent ways than this. You're now the ungrateful grub from the story who was gifted a deadly warship and complained about its paint job.

You push your empty plate away. "Okay," you say, "let's do this before I hate myself to death."

Sollux gets up and kisses your forehead. "That'th the KK I know," he says. You shove him. You're still friends.

The reproduction and pleasure suite is kept under drone guard; the ones currently on duty salute when you and Sollux arrive and step back to allow you to open the door. Inside, there's a series of privacy screens, painted with the likenesses of past Empresses and Emperors reclining in luxury with their consorts. You make a mental note to never pose for anything like that much of a douchebag, no matter what excuse gets presented to you.

Beyond the screens, the suite opens up to one big, open block. Up front there's the pool, and the bare slate floor around it, and the retaining rings in the walls that you hope you won't need to use again. Further back there's a lounging area with decorative fabric on the walls and an outrageously luxurious pile, and tucked in the farthest corners are the breeders' recuperacoons.

When you arrive, the older of your breeders is lounging by the side of the pool, watching the younger one—spawned from one of his clutches, if you've read all the paperwork right—execute a graceful turn in the water. They look totally wrapped up in each other.

Then they look up and see you there, and that all goes to hell. You ruin things just by existing yet again. The older one—Dualscar, god, that's a name for a general, not a breeding slave—has already rolled up onto his knees and bowed his head by the time you find your voice to say, "No, stop that, don't go all formal on me."

Dualscar smiles in this way that makes you have to remind yourself _really hard_ that he can't raise a claw against you. "Anythin you like, Your Devvastation," he says.

You want to snap at him— _tonight's not about you_ , maybe—but you'd probably just be encouraging him. Instead you look at the younger one, still in the water, looking almost as nervous as you feel. "You want to come out of there?" you ask, holding out a hand.

He gives you this beaming look of gratitude that you did absolutely nothing to deserve. "A course," he says, climbing up out of the water to meet you. He's taller than you are, though at least only by a reasonable, Solluxy degree, rather than a got-nearly-three-hundred-sweeps-on-you degree. The bones of his face are set at angles that look just faintly strange, and his thorax is slender but not quite delicate, water running down over the sleek planes of his muscles. There's so much needy hope in his eyes you can barely stand it.

"Says in your papers your name's Eridan," you say. "That right, or you go by something else?"

"That's right, Your Devvastation," he says. "I ain't had a chance to earn anythin else yet."

You're totally not hesitating, much, and you totally don't need the reassurance when Sollux runs a little psionic touch down your back. Maybe it helps, though. You take Eridan's hand. "Come on," you say. "Think I'd rather do this someplace comfortable."

He nods, following you around the pool to the lounging area on the other side. His hand is a little chilly in yours. Your digestive sac is in knots again. You hope Sollux isn't going to be watching too closely; sure, he _knows_ how pathetic you are, but you've been laying it on so thick lately you're embarrassing yourself.

You stop when you get to the lounging area; you look at Eridan, and he looks at you. You have no idea where to start. Eridan fidgets for a few seconds and then asks, "Howw can I please you, Your Devvastation?"

"It's Karkat," you say, and he blinks at you in confusion. "My name. You can call me Karkat when it's just us."

"Oh," he says, and stares at you like you've just given him something he doesn't even know what to do with. Dualscar was a little terrifying, but Eridan is...Sollux would say he's dangerous, because you look at him and you _know_ you could pity him if you tried. No, stop kidding yourself. You wouldn't even need to try. He's your age, according to his papers, and this will be his first time. He fidgets a little more.

You reach up and take his face in your hands, pulling him down so you can kiss his mouth. It's...nothing like kissing Terezi was; you suppose that shouldn't come as a surprise, but she's sort of your baseline for the experience. Eridan's kiss is gentle, maybe...teasing? His tongue flickers against yours and retreats, and his blunted teeth feel strange against your lips.

You want to undress, but you know you shouldn't. That's too personal, too vulnerable, too...quadranty. Still, you unbutton your jacket and toss that behind you, then rest your hands on his hip bones, below the arcs of his gills. He drapes his arms over your shoulders like he's trying to be confident and seductive but you've seen soldiers going to battle for the first time and that is exactly what he reminds you of right now.

"Here," you say, "let's, uh," really fucking eloquent, and you pull him down into the softness of the pillows. Your hand wanders down the length of his thigh, stroking his skin, feeling the smoothness of it. His hips arch toward you. "Okay," you say, "so, what do you...like? I mean, I know you haven't done this exactly, but...."

"I been trained to get hot for it if you use my mouth," he offers, and he sounds like he's trying to _help_ , for fuck's sake. You hide your face in the hollow of his shoulder so he won't see your expression.

"Okay," you say against the edge of his earfin. "Okay, we'll figure it out as we go." You start there, kissing him, licking the edge of one of those fins experimentally. He croons softly at the touch and the tines of his fin spread further, stretching the membrane taut. You let your teeth graze it, just slightly, and his breath hitches.

You kiss him again. You cup his face in one hand and press your lips to his and do your damnedest to act like this is what you want, both of you. He's handsome and gentle and you _want_ to pity him; you'd rather pity him than just go through the motions because he's your property. He makes sweet surrendering noises into your mouth and trembles as he clings to you—is that a thing they get taught? To act like they're frail and small, when eventually they'll tower over anyone who could possibly afford to own them.

Stop thinking about owning him, fuck. You pull Eridan close and try to just think about the cool solid sleekness of his body against yours. When you let his mouth go so you can look at him more clearly, his face has this expression of softly melting wonder that makes your bloodpusher seize. His eyes are like amethyst, and he smiles shyly when you meet them. You're doomed.

"Please," he breathes when your thumb slides over the arch of his hipbone, and then he clamps his mouth shut like he's afraid he's just broken some crucial rule.

"No, keep going," you say. "Please what?"

Eridan swallows hard. "Please, I mean, if it's okay, I'd like—" he hesitates again.

You raise an eyebrow. "Whatever the rumors say about me, I'm not actually a mind reader."

"Sorry," Eridan says. His hips rock. "If you—if you wwanted to touch my bulge—"

You curl your hand around it, soft damp skin, swelling and extending but not yet all the way unsheathed, you don't think. It twines with your fingers and squeezes, so you squeeze back, and he moans. That's so much better. You hope he'll make noises like that for you when you fill him. Thinking about that, listening to him, gets _your_ bulge in on the action at last. "Fuck," you gasp. "Yeah, I—you want to do this?"

He nods hard. "Gonna feel good," he says. "I nevver had anythin in me at all, wwasn't allowwed, an I wwanna f-feel it."

You groan, and he squirms against you. "If you get my pants open, I won't have to let go of you," you say.

Eridan _smiles_ , a little excited flash of teeth, a brightness in his eyes, and he unbuttons your pants and coaxes your bulge free like an expert. His paperwork didn't say anything about "deep trance" the way Dualscar's did, and you hope that means he won't go under. You want him like this, alert and interested and wanting you back.

"Okay," you say. You slip your other hand down between his legs, tracing the root of his bulge, sliding further back to stroke the lips of his nook. He's wet, and he squeaks at your touch, spreading his thighs.

You ease him onto his back and he spreads his legs further, making it easy for you to settle between them. His nook is a glistening deep purple between the velvet gray of his thighs. He drapes his arms over your shoulders as you lean over him. You lower your hips.

His nook is perfectly smooth, tight around you as your bulge twists and pulses its way in. "Oh, oh, _oh_ ," he gasps, his thighs trembling around your hips, and you're crumbling into helpless tender desperation at the way he just _surrenders_ to you.

You sink into him like you're coming home, like a pity-at-first-sight romance novel cliche, and you know you need to stop that, need to remember: he's not your matesprit. He's a potential bearer for your heir but he's not quadrant material. But it feels good, feels wonderful, your bulge rippling inside him and his nook throbbing around you, and all the soft, needy sounds he makes.

When you take a good grip on his bulge again and start to squeeze, Eridan whimpers, and you feel his nook tighten. "Got you," you tell him, feeling suddenly powerful and protective and—sure, okay, possessive too. "Just hang on, I got you."

He nods helplessly, his needy sounds spiraling up in pitch. He hooks one long leg around your waist, and that pulls you deeper. "Can I—that okay?"

"Fuck yes," you say, and he wraps his other leg around you too, heavy pressure at the small of your back, pressing you down into the tight slick welcome of his nook. You kiss him, and you're sloppy but he doesn't seem to care. He's clinging to you, trembling, and you think he must be close—god, you hope he's close, because you are, and you need to finish him to make the imprint take. To make him _yours_ , and that thought is a wash of fire through your bloodstream. You bite his lip, laying claim, growling in your throat, and he wails, convulsing under you, shuddering through a climax that leaves you drenched from waist to thighs.

There are tears on his cheeks as he tries to catch his breath, and you stretch up to lick at them. He turns his head to offer his face to you. "Who do you belong to?" you ask him breathlessly.

He smiles. "You, master."

Fuck, you don't want to like that as much as you do. You don't want to be trembling at the point of no return right this second. "Whose orders d-do you follow, fuck—"

"Yours, wwith all my blood an bone," Eridan says, fierce and sweet like he's promising you his heart, and the world goes red—gold—white around you as you fill him with your slurry while he holds you close. It doesn't feel decadent or perverse. It feels wonderful.

You cling to him in the aftermath and try not to think too hard about the completely gross mess of your clothes. He purrs, the sound reverberating through his thoracic cavity, and strokes his fingers through your hair. You want to stay here and kiss him sloppy, loll around like a spoiled lazy bastard until you catch your breath and then do this all again.

You're the fucking Emperor. You have every intention of doing the best you can with the job now that you're stuck with it, too. The second night after your coronation is awfully fucking early to throw that over and be a decadent shithead instead.

Two more minutes because you honestly don't have practice resisting this degree of obscene luxury, and _then_ you make yourself disengage from the stupidly comfortable tangle of Eridan's limbs. He sighs.

"Don't do that," you say. You cup his cheek in one hand. "I'll be back soon."

"Afore I'm ready for spawwnin?" he asks hopefully.

You try to hold out for about three seconds before you give up. "Yeah," you say. "I've got shit to take care of, but. You know. This was great? So I'll come back once I can spare some time."

"Kay," he says, and doesn't try to cling to you as you get up and collect your jacket. Your clothes need to be laundered or maybe just burned. You can afford that now, can't you? Just burn what you've ruined and get more. Weird.

Dualscar is sliding back into the pool, licking his lips, and Sollux is buttoning up his pants. You look back and forth between them a few times. "Gross, Captor," you say. Sure, in the abstract, you guys share everything. In the concrete, though, you're happier when you're not thinking about where he gets his bulge wet.

He shrugs, totally unapologetic. "Jutht keeping buthy," he says. "You didn't theem to need help thith time."

"You're an insufferable shit," you say. "You know that, right?"

"That'th why you keep me around," he says smugly. He looks down at your drenched clothes, and you know that particular smirk; it's the one that means _I have too many scathing replies to choose from_.

"Shut up, douchelord," you say preemptively. He snickers. "I need to go get changed, and then I want to review the shit from this evening's meetings again now that my head's clearer."

"Whatever Your Devathtathion requireth," Sollux says, giving you the most irritating bow in the history of the New Empire. He turns, and you follow him toward the door.

You can hear a soft splash behind you and the low murmur of Dualscar asking Eridan a question. You almost turn back, to see what they're doing, to say...you don't know what. They're just breeding stock, you remind yourself; you can't afford to make this personal. Let Dualscar have his privacy. Don't let Eridan get attached in ways that aren't appropriate. Leave them be.

You don't turn back to look. But you want to.


End file.
